Madagascar is the second-largest island nation in the world, similar in size to France or Texas. Lying off the coast of southern Africa, it’s home to nearly 30 million people and is a real biodiversity hotspot. Nearly 90 percent of its plants and animal species are endemic, meaning they can’t be found anywhere else in the world. But much of the hab…

In 2019 a group of prison officers from Philadelphia in the US spent three weeks working in jails across Scandinavia - in order to see whether their more humane approach to custody could work back at home. Five years on we visit SCI Chester’s ‘Little Scandinavia' to see whether the ‘homely’ environment - where prisoners can order groceries, cook th…

2024 has been called a record breaking year for elections, with billions of people eligible to take part in all types of votes. But how can we make sure people can vote safely and securely? We visit Australia's Northern Territory to see how voting takes place in incredibly remote communities. We also find out how a group of eminent women in Uganda …

TV BRA in Norway is a unique media organisation. Their fortnightly national news show is presented by reporters who have learning disabilities or are autistic.Through interviews with politicians and other authority figures the station aims to hold the powerful to account, while also changing the way that people with learning disabilities are seen. …

How can people get much needed health services as they go about their daily lives? We’re back in Kenya where we visit a barbers shop that offers mental health advice and support alongside the trim and shave. And we check out a truck stop just outside Nairobi where long distance drivers can not only grab some food but also get access to medical care…

The health of shorelines around the world is under threat like never before. We look at efforts being made in the UK to tackle some of the challenges posed by overfishing and climate change. We travel to Yorkshire in northern England to meet the scientists and fishing communities trying to work out how to protect local lobster stocks. And in Devon …

The Awajun people have lived in the Amazon rainforest for thousands of years but their way of life and environment is under threat from deforestation and unsustainable farming. Now Awajun women farmers have begun mixing old traditions with new technology to make a material which offers an alternative to leather made from animals. The women are work…

Half of the world's population don't have access to essential healthcare, according to the World Health Organisation. And even in highly developed countries many still lose out. This week on People Fixing The World we hear about some ideas that aim to change that. We jump on board a hospital train that travels around South Africa providing affordab…

Presenter Myra Anubi visits western Kenya to see an innovative project that’s using hi-tech drones to deliver HIV drugs and testing kits. It’s an attempt to tackle the number of infections amongst young adults in the region. The drones are dropping HIV kits at youth-focused events such as football matches and concerts. The idea is to take away some…

In a special edition, we join forces with fellow BBC podcast The Climate Question to share some of our favourite ways of fighting the impacts of climate change. Myra Anubi joins Jordan Dunbar to discuss solutions big and small - from tidal power in Northern Ireland to floating solar panels in Albania. Plus, we hear about pioneering community initia…

Concerns are growing about the effects of smartphones on both adults and children, so we're looking at ways to reduce our dependence on these ubiquitous devices. Presenter Myra Anubi attempts to ditch her smartphone for a week, while she finds out about a fast-growing campaign in which local parents get together to agree to delay buying them for th…

Climate change is affecting us all. When the temperature goes up, many of us reach for the air conditioning. But that in itself is making things worse. AC units use a huge amount of electricity and most use hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants - also known as HFCs which contribute to climate change. The International Energy Agency says over the next thre…

As athletes from around the world strive for glory at the Paris Olympics, we look at how sport has a unique ability to change people’s lives for the better. In a refugee camp in Lebanon we meet those who are being inspired by that most traditional of sports, cricket. In Kenya we meet women from the toughest backgrounds who are taking on the world a…

From the way we catch food, to how we generate energy, human activity inevitably impacts on wildlife and the environment in unintended ways. So this week we’re looking at ways to reduce this collateral damage. We visit a windfarm in Finland that's using AI to predict bird flight paths and stop individual turbines before they cause damage. And we jo…

In the US, police officers spend about a fifth of their time responding to mental health crises. This is something they are often not trained for, and figures also show that people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter. We go to Arizona where some 911 calls are now being responded to by mental…

In a special programme, Myra Anubi is in Nairobi, Kenya at the final of the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation which rewards the best new innovators on the continent. Their exciting solutions deal with access to healthcare, plastic recycling, waste disposal and pest detection. She meets the finalists and finds out which one of them has walked …

Tourism brings money and opportunities to communities around the world, but it brings risks too. Sometimes an influx of tourists changes a place, damages the environment or leads to the exploitation of local people. But the social enterprise Local Alike has a different model. They have worked with dozens of villages in Thailand to get them ready be…

Just over a quarter of people on the planet live in water stressed countries. And our increasing demands for water as well as climate change is putting even more pressure on this finite resource. We take a look at how Indian farmers are growing crops with a device that stores rain underground. Plus how a test farm in the US uses a special clay liqu…

US shopping malls, once a mainstay of American life, are in decline. Forty malls have closed since 2020, while more than 230 department stores have closed in the same time period, according to Green Street, a real estate analytics firm. But where there is change, there is also opportunity. After Burlington High School in Vermont had to close its do…

What we wear helps us express ourselves and communicate to others in the most immediate way. But the tools we frequently use to do that, such as clothing and haircare are not available to everyone equally. One in six of us has a disability of some sort - according to the World Health Organisation - but most clothing and beauty brands don’t take acc…

Mexico's capital often floods during the rainy season, but paradoxically, it's also running out of water. A large and growing population, along with crumbling infrastructure and the effects of climate change - are increasingly putting a strain on the city. We meet the army of scientists, activists and urban planners trying to solve this problem - a…

Poorer countries are likely to bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, with rising temperatures and more unsettled weather leading to greater stresses on natural resources and often inadequate infrastructure. But whilst there’s a lot of focus on global attempts to limit temperature rises by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, there are many …

If you could invent a new kind of school what would it look like? What skills would you teach children, and how would the school be run? On this edition of People Fixing The World we visit the Mechai Pattana School in Thailand which was founded by the campaigner Mechai Viravaidya in 2008, on principals of charity and leadership. Children are respon…

Across the world millions of women and girls face discrimination and worse because of their gender. On this edition of People Fixing The World we look at projects designed to change attitudes. In India we visit workshops aimed at recruiting younger men as allies in the fight against sexism and gender inequality. And we speak to the founder of Chalk…

Often described as underwater rainforests and the “lungs of the ocean”, kelp forests line as much as 25% of the world’s coastlines. They provide important shelter and food for fish and other marine life, and are vital for our oceans’ ecosystems. However kelp is under severe threat because of climate change, warming seas and overfishing. We look at …

Premature babies often need a lot of expensive specialised care - but that isn’t always available. So, doctors in Colombia are teaching mothers to look after their babies in a similar way that kangaroos look after their own young. It’s called "kangaroo mother care" and instead of being in an incubator, babies are wrapped tightly against their mothe…

The fashion industry is the third largest manufacturing industry in the world consuming huge amounts of the world’s resources and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. But some innovators are trying to make the industry more sustainable. We discover how old fire hoses in the UK have been diverted from landfill and turned into fashionable bags a…

Learning to read empowers people, reduces poverty and increases their job chances. Yet more than 700 miliion adults are illiterate, the majority of them women. We look at innovations to help adults learn how to read from flatpack classrooms in flood-prone regions of Bangladesh, to an app teaching tens of thousands in Somaliland. Plus how adults in …

We all know about the power of music to change our mood or to make us move. But an increasing body of evidence is showing that music has an amazing ability to help us heal. In this programme we are going to meet people working at the cutting edge of music therapy. We find out about the innovative system that uses music to help people with dementia …

Transforming the global food system is vital in the fight against climate change. Currently, food production accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the food system also fails to properly nourish billions of people worldwide. In this edition of People Fixing The World we’re looking at high and low tech solutions to t…

Could psychedelic drugs help in the treatment of mental health conditions? We look at pioneering research into psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms. We visit a clinic in Oregon, the only state in America where the use of psilocybin in therapeutic sessions is legal and hear from one patient who says it's the only treatment …

Whistleblowers - they're the good guys right? The ones who speak truth to power and have films made about the heroic stands they took? Sometimes. Often the people who speak up in the workplace are ignored or shut down. Worse still they're often bullied or harassed or end up losing their jobs. They're the ones you never hear about. This week we hear…

Schools across Senegal have discovered a clever way for children to surf the web even when there isn't any signal. They're using a special WIFI hotspot which works without an actual internet connection, so students and teachers can access all the relevant bits of the web, offline. Around the world, innovators are coming up with solutions like this …

Australia used to be one of the most linguistically diverse places, with over 200 languages. Today, many of Australia’s indigenous languages are considered “highly endangered”. Inspired by his native language, Hebrew, Ghil’ad Zuckermann is a linguistics professor who is on a mission to revive Australia’s dead and endangered languages, painstakingly…

Barcelona in Spain is famous for its beautiful streets, lined with tall apartment buildings. But the architecture is a problem for many people who have lived for years in upstairs apartments but who now find the stairs unmanageable. In 2008, a survey found that in one district there were 300 people who could not leave their homes alone. A group of …

On this edition of People Fixing The World we meet people who’ve helped overcome long-standing cultural biases to create better outcomes for everyone. In India we hear about the social media campaigns which have helped city dwellers in Bengaluru see those who pick waste from rubbish dumps not as dangerous and dirty but as invaluable recyclers. In N…

From beavers in the UK to bison in Romania and jaguars in Argentina, ecologists around the world are reintroducing animals that once flourished in particular areas. The theory is, if done correctly, they can boost biodiversity and restore ecosystems with benefits ranging from reducing forest fires to tackling invasive species. But the strategy is c…

The Amazon is the largest forest in the world, spread across nine countries in South America and home to 47 million people. It’s crucial for the planet’s biodiversity and in the fight against climate change. But vast numbers of trees have been cut down for logging, construction, mining and farming. On this edition of People Fixing The World we meet…

This week we have a host of great ideas inspired by solutions we've told you about in 2023. We find out how scientists are using fake birds to help populations of seabirds to recover. By putting out model birds in restored habitats they trick the real ones into nesting there. Then we have the heartwarming tale of Theo – a man in his seventies - and…

Landfill sites are an icon of our wasteful society and the harm we cause to Planet Earth. But around the world, people are trying to make these filthy places a little bit better. We visit the human-built island in Singapore made of burned waste that has become a thriving ecosystem. And in France, we hear how gas leaking from landfill sites is being…

Loneliness affects millions of people around the world and can have a significant impact on our mental and physical health. In the Netherlands, they are taking the problem seriously, with a national coalition of organisations all trying to bring people together and build connections. We visit a youth club teaching teenagers how to overcome shyness …

How do you stop people chopping down precious rainforest? In the Indonesian part of Borneo, researchers for a conservation charity discovered that local people were chopping down the rainforest around them for an incredibly understandable reason – they needed to pay for medical treatment for themselves and their children. So they started a project …

Every year the world produces 400 million tonnes of plastic – the same weight as all the humans on earth. Only a small proportion of this is recycled, and this isn’t proper recycling but “downcycling” – the new plastic is of a lower quality, meaning that almost all plastic eventually goes to waste. But now French company Carbios is using enzymes to…

Millions of women around the world lack access to safe and hygienic menstrual products. But there are people trying to change that. We meet the British student who learned to sew in lockdown and started making reusable sanitary pads for refugees. She’s helped distribute tens of thousands of pads and is now training refugee women in Lebanon how to m…

In the farming community of Los Negros in rural Bolivia, the river is their life and livelihood. So when that river started to dry up, it made life very hard. They blamed the villages upstream for not looking after their precious water. This conflict could have turned ugly. But with the support of a local charity, what came out of it instead was a …

Heroin users in Scotland are being trained to spot when someone is about to overdose and to step in and help. The training – which includes lessons on how to use the antidote naloxone - is often led by people who have themselves been addicts. Taxi drivers and police officers are also being trained, and naloxone being widely distributed, as part of …

In the midst of a crisis, sometimes the solution you need isn’t obvious. Today we meet the inventors who found fascinating fixes amid the chaos and destruction of disasters. We visit the hospital that was painstakingly constructed inside a train, to treat Ukrainian civilians in a war zone. We follow a team in Fiji who have created a mobile workshop…

Meet the oceans’ unsung hero - the humble sea cucumber. An animal in the same family as starfish that looks like a lumpy sausage and lives on the ocean floor could help with some of the impact of global warming, pollution from fish farms and damage from the fishing industry that are threatening some of the oceans most important ecosystems. We meet …

More than 400 people in Ireland took their own lives in 2022. In Limerick, helicopters are often heard flying above the city in search of missing people in the River Shannon. But in response to this tragic situation, a group has sprung up to patrol the Shannon in the evenings to speak with people who are feeling desperate. Katie Flannery joins them…

Artificial intelligence can sometimes provoke fear and anxiety. Will it take away our jobs? Will it take over the world? So it’s important to recognise some of the good things AI is being used for. We look at how AI chatbots are helping people tackle anxiety, how AI is being used in Africa to lower infant mortality and even speak to the team using …